The nearly ubiquitous availability of wireless network connectivity has revolutionized the manner in which information is delivered to mobile communication devices. As a consequence, information of interest can now be delivered in real-time to users of mobile communication devices where and when it is most useful. The current generation of mobile computer applications can operate in conjunction with geographic positioning systems (GPS) to deliver information or media content that is relevant to the current location of a mobile communications device. Such mobile computer applications can continually monitor the geographic position of the mobile communication device on which it is running, send this position information over a wireless connection to a networked server which can then deliver information to the mobile communication device that is relevant to the current geographic position of the device and which may be of interest to the device user.
Generally, with reference to FIG. 1, different wireless network technologies have been developed to fulfill different needs. Wide area wireless network technology, such as cellular technology, was developed to at first facilitate mobile voice communication, and then later was extended to deliver data and media information. Mobile access to cellular signals largely depends on strategically positioning enough cellular antennas in a geographic area to provide full coverage. While cellular signals propagate freely outside buildings, they do not necessarily propagate to the interior of certain types of buildings. So, in order to provide wireless access to networks on the interior of a building, local area wireless technologies, such as Wi-Fi and DECT, have been developed that can be used for voice and data communication, and for the sending and receiving of various other types of media content.
With the proliferation of wireless connectivity to networks that permits access to information stored in association with computational devices (i.e., servers) connected to these networks, a very large number of applications (mobile applications) are being developed that are compatible to run on mobile communication devices. During the time that a mobile device is connected to a wireless network, a user of the device is able to search for and down-load information that they are interested in and which is germane to their current geographic location. At some point network developers and mobile communication developers realized that by implementing geographic positioning system (GPS) functionality in a mobile communication device they could easily track the current location of a mobile device and use this current location as the basis for identifying information to be delivered to the mobile device. Such location-based information delivery applications can be configured to request or pull location dependent content from a network, or they can be configured to automatically accept certain type of information that is of interest to the device user. Regardless of the method, the delivery of information to a mobile device based upon the current location of that device was a step forward in the development of mobile applications.
In addition to adding location tracking functionality to mobile communication devices, wireless communication device developers found it beneficial to implement functionality in these devices that detects device motion and orientation. This functionality is typically implemented with an accelerometer, and the output of an accelerometer can be used to re-orient information that is displayed on a mobile device screen so that the user is not forced to re-orient the device in order to easily view the information.